The poor mans crime is to make things more simple than they are, the rich mans crime is to make things more complicated than they are.
The poor man steals thinking what’s yours is mine, and he does or does not get caught to suffer the complexity of the matter.
The rich man steals saying I have what you want and you have what I want and we’re going to share it according to the law, which is the domain of the financial elite.
Laws only exist for the little people. If you’re at the top laws are optional of whether to follow or not. You can even rewrite them to fit your own needs.
I think people dramatically underestimate the extent to which you really even have to pay attention to most laws. If you know how to behave yourself in public you could be John Wayne Gacy for years and no one would think anything of it. What you can’t do is break the dumb laws like harassing people or making too much noise. If you accept that to be a criminal you have a duty to yourself to stay low-key, then you’ll have a chance of living a life without actually being under any laws. I mean…I think of how most people believe that the govt is watching everything all the time and blah blah blah. It’s physically and theoretically impossible. There’s a reason that “needle in a haystack” is an old, old saying.
As far as the law being the domain of the rich, and how businesses use it to leverage consumers in such ways that are tantamount to robbery…absolutely. It’s the unfairness that’s built into the system that perpetuates inequality. It’s not that the top 1% are smarter,(as in more informed) or harder working or the most innovative.
The poor guy though…his crimes aren’t always simple. Sometimes those guys have a lot of free time, and can spend years putting together schemes the complexity of which should never be known. It could be the guy who seems poor but who isn’t that is doing all the stealing because he’s getting away with more of it cleaner than the obvious crooks and businessman crooks.
So I don’t know if I agree with the part about the variance in complexity, necessarily, but I think that there’s something to what you’ve said here that’s interesting. A good point that I take from your post is that everyone is some kind of criminal. I believe that, wholeheartedly, to be true. Just think…every place and every thing in the world that you ever thought was clean through and through, or pure in any way, upon any investigation beyond the facade is revealed to be no more than the same old dirty, unreasoned, instinctual shit that we’ve been looking at for years. It’s like when I started paying my mom’s power bills and stuff, suddenly, she was acting just like every other asshole I ever gave a handout to. Just kissing my ass and putting on her best sincere face to show her approval and appreciation. But the thing is, a dog makes that same face when you give it a treat. A kid when you give it candy, and a junkie when you give it drugs. It doesn’t mean anything. There’s no satisfaction to be had from it. They’re all just animals sniffing asses and searching for food and they don’t even know it. Smiling at stimulus x, frowning at stimulus y. Nothing ever changes.
There is only one sin (aka “crime”) - presumption, made by both rich and poor.
…and laws are for those who can’t/won’t make and stick to their agreements with others.
Social contract theory? Really? Do we have to beat that dead horse all over again here?
Call it whatever you like. Beat it all you like. But those who stick to their agreements have no need for laws.
… nor a government to enforce them (hint hint).
There is no social agreement in society. There is only blackmail, ultimatums, and a existence of captivity.
The “agreement” is implied not stated outright, so yeah you can deny it exists if you like. It’s an abstract notion supposed to justify the existence of societies, but of course societies exist not because they are “justified” but for the same reason rocks and trees and flocks of birds exist, because it’s a natural process of development. Whatever names people wish to call it ends up being largely irrelevant.
Crimes with different motivations, yeah. The rich get privileges while the poor become scapegoats. But then again the opposite is also often the case, of the poor getting “privileges” (subsidies, food stamps, less or no tax bill, free healthcare) and the rich becoming “scapegoats” (get blamed by large segments of lower or middle classes, for anything and everything that those classes see is wrong with the world).
Crimes of need are different from crimes of greed. The former are signs of where society is failing, the latter are signs of where society is “doing too well” and producing excess.